Cable Pantywaist Snow

From the "Various Crap" file:

• Ed over at Return of the Reluctant considers the fact that cable television is no longer considered a luxury. As he points out:
  

  That's more than my DSL bill. That's more than my phone bill. That's more than my electric bill. That's six movies at a theatre. That's two hardbacks. And if you were to save that over the course of the year, that would be $660.

I have lived fairly significant portions of my life sans cable, and when I finally move out, I have every intention of continuing to live without cable, assuming that the networks are still broadcasting their programs. Basically what I watch now is "Gilmore Girls", "Lost", "Alias", "Desperate Housewives", "Scrubs", and "Everwood" (I started watching it with my mom, and don't have the heart to stop, in spite of a pretty awful, Anne Heche-type of a season.) On cable, the only show I watch regularly is "Justice League Unlimited", because I like seeing all the DC Universe characters that I never would have expected in animated form. Aztek? Vibe? Booster Gold? (To which I naturally ask my television: whither thou, Ambush Bug??) I used to watch Adult Swim, until it sort of seemed to become the sole property of Seth MacFarlane, and after they cancelled "Home Movies".

Whenever I tell people that I don't plan on having cable when I move out, they react with shock and suspicion, as if such a thing is tantamount to moving to Montana, into a shack without running water or electricty, and sending strange parcels to various high-powered executives of Fortune 500 companies. The problem is, with cable, I turn it on and leave it on, and it just sucks up my life with a sponge. With network television, you have the vile local news programs after the (occasionally) good stuff to let you know that the good stuff is over. When I was last sans cable, I did tend to leave on PBS in a manner similar to the way I leave on cable; this just meant that I watched programs about Holocaust deniers and that creepy Evangelical haunted house down in Texas. Seriously, that shit disturbed me, and not in the "finding god" way I think they hoped for. But lets be honest, that's considerably different content than when I leave Cartoon Network on all night.

If I'm going to have my life sucked away by technology, I'd rather have my computer do the sucking: at least there's a modicum of interaction demanded for me to effectively fritter my life away.

• Stephen King is going to be publishing a book in the fabulous Hard Case Crime Library. This may be my chance to actually read him without a major freak-out within the first three pages. (I sort of had a fit while reading The Tommyknockers. I've mentioned before that I'm a bit of a pantywaist.)
• If "no point" is a problem in a blog, I'm pretty much screwed. I say stick to it, Ffej (or even Llib) be damned.
• The snow is pretty in the trees. The closest thing to seeing a Van Gogh painting is looking at a street lamp at night through the snow-laden branches of leafless trees; the snow becomes light, a halo radiating out from its source. Very Starry Night. I think that everyone should see that at least once in their lifetime.

My parents have listed their house for sale, and are talking about moving to Rochester, NY, to be near my uncle and his family. I have officially started to carpet-bomb univesities (and public libraries) with applications, because I don't want to move with them.

Song: !!!, "When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Karazzee "